


At Least for Now

by Recycling



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recycling/pseuds/Recycling
Summary: In retrospect, Harrow should have known better than to send Gideon and The Fourth down to the laboratories on a fruitless mission. A flipped perspective on the aftermath of the death of The Fourth House.
Relationships: Gideon Nav & Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	At Least for Now

Gideon Nav was not someone Harrow ever would have described as subtle. Her entrances into any space were usually well noted by everyone present. This time though, the only noise that proceeded Gideon’s entrance was a horrible, wet, dripping sound that Harrow failed to pick up on until it was too late. 

Hect leaned against the wall a blank expression on her face. Her necromancer sat next to The Seventh’s sick bed. Harrow stood like a small, black ghost in the corner, spine rigid and eyes unmoving. Palamedes had been in the middle of recounting details about the sixth’s libraries to a very insipid looking Dulcinea, “-our greatest articles, though, are held in –" when Harrow’s cavalier appeared in the doorway.

Blood. There was so much blood and Harrow’s stomach dropped. Gideon’s face was slack with shock as she held the shattered body of Jeannemary Chatur in her arms. Looking at nothing, and no one, expressionless and blank, Gideon lifted the tiny corpse like an offering, or like she was begging for someone to take it from her. In a dream-like fugue, the cavalier could not even form words, her mouth moving without producing sound. Harrow was rooted in place, her brain short circuiting in trying to figure out where she had gone wrong. Safe. Sending them down to the basement was supposed to be safe and Harrow had massively screwed up that plan, somehow.. How could she have been so foolish? No one broke the horrific silence, but Hect was the first to reach Gideon, turning the shocked cavalier out of the room and gently guiding her down the hallway. Harrow followed like a shadow, eyes never leaving the drooping shoulders of her cavalier. 

Harrow stood in the corner, out of the way of the flurry of activity that occurred as the inhabitants of Canaan house were alerted of the slaughter and made their way to the morgue. Someone retrieved Isaac’s body and placed the two teens next to each other. Harrow’s attention, though, was focused on a single point in the opposite corner, where Gideon was slumped over in a chair. Looking half dead herself, the Ninth cavalier stared at the wall in front of her without flinching as the Sixth cavalier pulled bone fragments out of her wounds. Hect moved away and Gideon’s gaze shifted around the room, grazing over her necromancer as if she was not even there. This made Harrow angry. Gideon had almost died, through no small fault of Harrow’s hubris in thinking she could control the situation, and Gideon did not even have the decency to act contrite about it. Before considering her purpose in doing so, she was moving towards her cavalier, the way the two of them were always drawn into each other’s gravity. 

Gideon did not look at her as she approached, and Harrow had to grab great fistfuls of her robe to avoid reaching out and shaking her. Words tumbled out of her mouth before she could process what she was saying. 

“Griddle! What were you thinking? You should have come to me as soon as you got out of the basement. _You dullard_ , why would you go to the laboratory? You know nowhere in this house is safe, _you imbecile_. You could have died, _you fool_ …”

Harrow stopped to take a breath. Gideon’s only response was to drop her face into her hands. This enraged the necromancer even further; shouldn’t Gideon be screaming at her as well? Was it not Harrow that sent them all down to their deaths in the first place? 

“You risked everything by making stupid decisions, Griddle. I expected you to be smarter than even that, but apparently that is asking too much of you. You always take the worst possible course of action. You fell asleep with a murderous construct on the loose and you somehow managed to be the only survivor…”

Harrow stopped short at her own words. Only survivor. Gideon had been the only one that survived, but how? Or why? She let go of her robes, took one deep breath, and walked away as fast as dignity would allow her. 

Harrow spent hours going over every inch of the study. Her constructs guarded the main door while she examined the walls for hidden entrances. The laboratory was as they had left it. The bed where the Fourth cavalier had died was bloody still, with bone fragments remaining in the puncture marks that ended her life. The osseous matter yielded no useful information, try as she might to understand anything from them. The message on the wall contained the same fragments. Whatever had killed the teen had left the message, but that was hardly surprising information. There was no apparent way, other than the door, that anything could have entered the room.

She walked over to the chair that Gideon had fatefully fallen asleep in and sat down. Anything that could have gained entrance through the doors would have had to pass by Gideon first. And it would have been the easiest thing to kill the Ninth cavalier before moving in on the Fourth. It would have been smarter, too, given Gideon’s superior size and fighting skills. Why kill the younger cavalier and risk Gideon waking up and fighting back? Whatever had killed the teen had left Gideon alive on purpose, and that thought was almost as troubling to Harrow as realizing how close she had come to having a dead cavalier. 

It was well into the night when Harrow gave up on her search of the study as a fruitless effort. Whatever had selectively spared Gideon had not left enough information for her to discover its identity. Returning to the Ninth quarters, she shrugged off her robes and washed her face. She was almost relieved to find Gideon already asleep, because that was at least a small delay before she had to deal with any anger from her. She shuddered to think how Gideon would react when the truth about the Seventh’s cavalier came to light.

Harrow knew she should sleep, but also knew she could not with all the unanswered questions swirling around in her head. In the inner rooms, she heard Gideon moving around in her ridiculous blanket nest. Grabbing the duvet off the big bed, Harrow wrapped it around herself and quietly went to stand at the foot of her cavalier’s nest. 

“How do you just keep living, Nav?” The necromancer whispered to herself, “Can nothing kill you?” 

Gideon’s brow furrowed in her sleep, and she murmured something incomprehensible as she flopped onto her side. Harrow was overcome for a moment with a feeling much like relief that her cavalier was still here to continue to vex her. Something she could not name prompted her to sit down on the floor and further cocoon herself in the duvet. Gideon was probably still in shock after all, and who knew if she would wake up and do something stupid if she forgot herself? So, Harrow watched.

The Ninth cavalier slept restlessly through the night, muttering out names and pained cries, tossing and turning and reaching out as if she was digging, as if she was grasping, as if she was arranging something that she could not quite master, but she did not wake. The worst came when it sounded as if she was choking or drowning, and it lifted her body off the bed with the force of it. Harrow could stand it no longer.

“Griddle, wake up! Wake up, it’s just a dream.” 

Harrow leaned towards the nest but did not want to touch her. Did not want to give her anything that would startle her further, but she had reached her limit for how much she could watch.  
Gideon opened her eyes, blinked twice at her necromancer, and raised her eyebrows in confusion. 

“It’s just me,” she said impatiently, “Go back to sleep.” 

Obediently, Gideon turned over and did just that. Harrow settled back into her duvet, thankful that her lapse in judgement had not managed to get Gideon killed, at least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the People's Tomb Discord fic jam week two, prompt: dream, and this was one of the few places I could remember dreams being mentioned. Thanks for reading!


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